A Random Shot
Artist	Edwin Landseer
Year	1848
Type	Oil on canvas, genre painting
Dimensions	121 cm × 182 cm (48 in × 72 in)
Location	Bury Art Museum, Greater Manchester

A Random Shot is an 1848 oil painting by the British artist Edwin Landseer. It depicts a snow-covered mountaintop in the Highlands of Scotland, where a deer struck by a random shot of a hunter has managed to reach before dying. A fawn nuzzles against her forlornly.

Deers as victims on man's aggression had been a theme running through Landscapes work during the decade. In this case it shows the violation of the unwritten rule that a female deer with young should never be shot.^[1] The artist drew inspiration for the painting from a passage in Walter Scott's The Lord of the Isles. Landseer added the snow at a late stage in order to heighten the emotion of the scene.^[2]

The work may have been commissioned by Prince Albert, but ended up in the collection of Thomas Wrigley.^[3] the picture was displayed at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1848 at the National Gallery in London, where it attracted a great deal of attention. ^[4] Today the painting is in the Bury Art Museum in Greater Manchester, having been acquired in 1897. ^[5]

References

Bibliography

• Donald, Diana. Picturing Animals in Britain, 1750–1850. Yale University Press, 2007.
• Ormond, Richard. Sir Edwin Landseer. Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1981.

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